Thrillers just aren’t the right tune for Carrey to dance to, and as if somehow compensating for his lack of familiarity with the genre Jim spends most of the movie mugging and overacting. He’s too wrong for the role. The part requires a kind of subtlety he just doesn’t have. Jim barely gets by as a dramatic actor, as a crazy on the loose in a thriller he’s more looney tunes than lunatic.

I'm a bit afraid 'the Number 23' isn't going to be good, the three reviews i saw were bad. And funny enough, they confirm my thoughts on the trailer.

The main problem seems to be that people don't believe Carrey in this character. The biggest problem is -suprise, suprise- Schumacher as a not-so-good director in combination with a silly script.

Ofcours, I can hear you all think, "Don't listen to the critics", I know. And I'm not planning to. I'll make up my own mind. but reading my pre-thoughs on it in the first three reviews ... that concerns me.

Ooh, glad I'm not the only one. It makes me wonder if this is why New Line is going out of its way to heavily promote the movie, or at least generate Internet buzz. There's a small way to know if "23" will be critically successful; keep a close observation to the the TV spots:

If they become frequent with numerous positive quotes from big name critics BEFORE it hits theaters, it shows that the movie will do - and be - good.

If they show very few quotes from unknown critics (in some cases, they make the quotes huge but the source impossible to read) or no quotes before and after it hits theaters, then it was a bust.

if u think about it, thr critics never gave Jim's films much love. the exceptions would probably be Bruce Almighty, Lemony Snicket and ESOTM (of course).......at least to the best of my knowledge, i could be wrong. but non-the-less, critically, this will ultimately get medicore reviews but will do well financially. so there is nothing to really worry about.

I have to dissagree. You see, critics loved Jim Carrey in the realy good movies. Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, ... also Lemony Snicket was doin' pretty good because of the fact his role was something completely different.

You have to keep in mind that comedies and simple thrillers (almost) always have fifty-fifty comments. (Or they have to be realy original of very well written) It's a strange thing, but it is. They don't score high points. Since 1/3th of Jim's list are comedies, that explains a lot.

The man from the review you posted hates Jim Carrey, before watching the movie he wrote an article saying Jim wasn´t quite good in Drama and that he was still "Jim Carrey" in Eternal Sunshine, that has no sense.

In the review he doesn´t like the way of the book role Fingerling that I´m sure that as the others book roles is quite stereotyped, that´s a director order and maybe you are fine with that or not.

The other things I´ve seen apart of this review are IMDB user comments, there are three, and all of them talk very well about the movie.

I think the cinema blend review are bad news but I think there is hope too.

Well, Chip. The other two were user-comments (therefore not here) in another language pretty much saying the same thing. No bad things about Carrey though, exept the fact that he's not at his best in this genre.

"I came in expecting one of two movies. One: A movie that was patently about what it was about, as evidenced in the trailer. Or two: a harrowing psychological thriller showing how just one doubt can pull a reasonable mind into unreasoning madness. What I got was a bit of both with a healthy dose of neither."